Job Resume: Past & Present

An individual recently reached out to me via e-mail and asked if I would share an outline of my resume I used to apply for jobs when I graduated from nurse anesthesia school. I figured I’d share a copy of my 2014 and recently revised 2017 resume just to serve as a template for those may be interested.

Without getting into too much detail because this topic has been written about ad nauseum, whatever it is I am about to share, it’s already been written about extensively, so I encourage you to find those explanations online. The purpose of this post is to show you what I’ve taken from my readings on how resumes ought to be constructed. They should be succinct, elegant and able to be skimmed by the reader in 30 seconds. That means DO NOT GO BEYOND 2 PAGES! Unless your career is in academia or you’re a researcher, there’s no need to go in overkill with your resume. The idea behind it is you want to give enough information that it elicits interest from the interviewer and you let them ask the questions. You don’t want to bombard them with boring details about your previous work and school experience because we all get it: you’re a hard worker, everyone loved you in your previous job, and you’re a genius at school. Woop-de-doo.

I recently updated my CV in 2017 to reflect the changes I’ve experienced in my career, which includes my primary work at the medical center I work at along with my private practice experiences. I’ve made some slight changes to the order of certain sections because obviously, as you begin to accrue more work experience, that information becomes more relevant than which anesthesia school you went to.

I’ve authored a few articles for publication and have participated in a number of projects at work. However, note that I simply refer to them. I don’t go into great detail into what I’m doing. As previously mentioned, I just want to give enough information in the hopes of piquing the interest of the person who is reading the resume and ultimately, hoping that it will influence them to ask questions about those projects (assuming they care about that stuff, which in all likelihood, they don’t. We’re not as interesting as we tend to think ourselves to be.)

Again, I just want to reiterate that this is only one way to doing it, but I think the overall point is make sure when you’re creating a resume to make it short, succinct, and easy to read. You’ve got 30 seconds to make an impression on paper. Make every word and every layout count.